Metadiscoursive interaction in the ma theses and doctoral dissertations of the native speakers of English and the Turkish speakers of english: the case of transition markers

This study has been conducted to evaluate the transition marker (TM) usage in the MA theses and doctoral dissertations (PhD) written by the native speakers (NSs) of English and the Turkish speakers (TSs) of English. The purpose is to compare the TM use and the most salient transition types in the introduction, results and discussion, and conclusion sections by both groups' randomly selected MA theses and PhD dissertations in the field of ELT between the years 2010 and 2014. Lastly, the study will both allow for a better understanding of language use and acquisition that occurs as a part of the production of the academic texts and will also be a guide for teaching and understanding of cross-cultural academic writing. In this investigation, the importance of the TMs in the academic texts were evaluated descriptively. The WordSmith Tools 5.0 software was used in order to analyze the data. TMs and their types were analyzed in terms of percentages, frequencies per 1,000 words and they were interpreted by calculating the log-likelihood (LL) value whether there was a significant difference in their usage. The results indicated that the frequencies, and frequencies per 1,000 words of the TM and the most salient transition type usage in the sections which were investigated of the MA theses and the doctoral dissertations were different. On the other hand, it was established that the overuse and the underuse of the TMs and their most preferred type had differed in the mentioned sections of the MA theses and the PhD dissertations written by the NSs of English from the TSs of English in the field of ELT. As a result, it was determined that the TSs had a general tendency to use the TMs both in their MA theses and doctoral dissertations. Keywords: Metadiscoursive interaction, corpus, corpus-based, transition markers (TMs), MA theses, doctoral dissertations (PhD), Turkish speakers (TSs) of Engish, native speakers (NSs) of English